The Next Energy Secretary

The insights to enable the next energy secretary succeed are laid in black and white.

The Next Energy Secretary

By José Antonio Vanderhorst-Silverio, Ph.D.
Systemic Consultant: Electricity

First posted in the GMH Blog, on October 3rd, 2008.

Copyright © 2008 José Antonio Vanderhorst-Silverio. All rights reserved. No part of this article may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, without written permission from José Antonio Vanderhorst-Silverio. This article is an unedited, an uncorrected, draft material of The EWPC Textbook. Please write to javs@ieee.org to contact the author for any kind of engagement.

We should thank Harry Collins, Steve Koonin, Jack Casazza, the late Fred C. Schweppe, and many other experts that have tried to help us with their insights. We should also thank systemic thinker Donella Meadows, a co-author the Limit to Growth international bestseller. I have a copy of the 1992 update edition, entitled “Beyond the Limits, confronting global collapse, envisioning a sustainable future,” that I believe is the true reality check, and not something to laugh at.

Maybe it is too late to do anything and our global society is bound by a too little understanding, as explained by another expert that should be thanked, Jared Diamond for his book “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.” What Koonin explains is also that we are choosing to fail unless we change the system. EWPC is intended to allow system leverage on a global scale at the World Trade Organization. As part of the single undertaking, the Doha Round should be reopened to implement the conclusions of the Copenhagen’s 2009 decisions to replace the Kyoto Protocol.

Under the Energy Pulse article Another Inconvenient Truth: The Need for Coal, by Mark Gabriel, Jude Clemente says that “It many ways, it remains irrelevant what we do because the world is turning to coal, mainly India and China - as Biden talked about last night.” I disagree; that is about business as usual, instead of changing the system. So, it is not irrelevant what the U.S. does, as can be seen in the Kyoto agreement (the U.S. boycott it), and also in The BIG California LIE (please read it) that has sequester the power global industry under obsolete price controls.

Jack Casazza repeatedly explained how politicians, lawyers and economists have taken over the power industry doing a lot of harm. Today I made a comment to highlight another Casazza type example on the post A BRIDGE TO SOMEWHERE - The Next Energy Secty Will Be... by EnergyBiz Editor in-Chief Martin Rosenberg, who start said post with “Well, if you are asking who it SHOULD BE, cast our vote for John Rowe.”

By reading "Our Take" and "View from the Bridge," it is wise to "agree that we have lost our way," to allow the new "course that deals with climate and energy supply" and demand "issues in a decisive way" to emerge. This begs the question of leadership.

As the case of the mainframe versus PCs of the computer industry can attest, John Rowe misunderstanding of the non-trivial aspects of the power industry is based on his flawed statement that confuses the properties of the system (affordable high reliability electricity) from the properties of one of the (unreliable) parts, when he said "Are we going to be in an era when politics written with a Capital 'P' continues to make it so difficult to accomplish those large projects that we become dependent on smaller technologies, even though the smaller ones are more expensive?

The proper mix of large and smaller technologies should not be the result of Capital 'P' regulation biased to large projects. We need to let the market decide, and that can be enabled with a decisive action that allows the new course to emerge.

The action should be based on a neutral environment as explained in the EWPC article Leadership Answers What to do First, whose summary states: "The answer to the question of what to do first is for the global power industry to get out of the wrong jungle to produce a EWPC based EPAct as soon as possible. That is the kind of leadership needed to face the inevitable fundamental changes required to significantly reduce today's legislative and regulatory uncertainty."

Hence EWPC is what the next energy secretary needs. Please take also a look at the article EWPC Blog's First Year Anniversary: Electricity for the Digital Era.